


Closed Doors

by MagalaBee



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2020-10-27 06:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20755673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagalaBee/pseuds/MagalaBee
Summary: Oak and iron were her shield. Keeping herself locked in and the world locked out...





	1. Oak and Iron

**Author's Note:**

> The first installment in a brief character study for Ingrid & Sylvain and the uniqueness of a friendship that inspired her to live again.

The doors in the ancient and aging Galatea fortress were thick. Carved from ancient oak and lined with wrought iron frames, every door in the noble family’s home was a strong slab between one room and the next. They needed to be forged from the toughest materials to stand up to the ice and blizzards that ravaged Faerghus’s highest peaks for nine months out of the year. 

Oak and iron were her shield. Keeping herself locked in and the world locked out. The world where everyone else kept on living. Where her mother and her father and her brothers kept going with their lives in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

For weeks, their voices were nothing more than a thin fog, knocking on that barrier of hardwood.

For weeks, Ingrid did not answer. She kept her curtains drawn closed, cutting herself off from any sense of light.

In the depths of her sorrow, and the fog of voices all begging for her to come out, there was only one that asked something different of her.

“Ingrid?”

Her eyes slowly moved from the ceiling, which she had been staring blankly at for hours, and found the wrought-iron frame of that heavy door. She knew the voice which broke through the haze. She wondered if her parents had brought Sylvain to visit in some hope of drawing her out.

“Ing... I know you don’t want to come out,” he conceded, his voice muffled and distant. “But can I come in?”

Maybe it was because he was the first person who asked to come into her conclave of mourning, or maybe it was because Sylvain had known Glenn too. Whatever it was that pulled her up from her bed, Ingrid found her hand reaching out and pulling back her heavy shield just a crack. Enough for him to slip inside before he helped her close it again.

“Ingrid...” Sylvain’s voice wasn’t muffled anymore and she winced slightly at how loud he suddenly sounded. How long had she been listening to people through that door?

“Can I light a candle?” he asked, rather than trying to pull back her curtains. Ingrid only nodded in reply. She could barely see his face in the thick darkness she had surrounded herself with. But somehow, Sylvain managed to find a match and a candlestick, both left abandoned on her bureau. 

When the tiny flame flickered to life, she heard Sylvain hold his breath. He was trying not to gasp at her. Did she look so pathetic? Ingrid knew she must. She hadn’t bathed or eaten. Only wept and slept and tried to convince herself that none of it was real.

That the king and queen were still alive. That any moment now, Glenn would knock on her door and call her silly for ever doubting him.

“Ing...” Sylvain murmured, his hand finding her shoulder. She tensed beneath his gaze, unable to look him in the face. She knew what was coming. He’d chastise her and try to convince her to come outside. It was why her parents had brought him here, wasn’t it? Sylvain was the only one of her friends who wasn’t actively mourning as well, there was no one else to even try.

“I... need your help,” he said instead, breaking from the sympathies and platitudes that Ingrid had expected.

“...What?”

“I got myself in some trouble,” he said, his voice hesitant. When Ingrid looks up, she could tell he was observing her. Studying the starving hollows in her cheeks and how grey her eyes had become. “I could use your advice.”

“I don’t know... what I could possibly tell you.”

“That’s ok,” he shrugged and gently led them both to her bed. He sat her down and then perched beside her, pulling out a napkin from his jacket pocket. Inside, he had wrapped two scones from the kitchens. Without asking, he handed her one, and Ingrid stared at the simple piece of food in her hands.

She had no appetite. Eating felt like a chore. The very idea of it made her flinch in pain. 

“So there’s this girl,” Sylvain began, carefully wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “She’s gorgeous, Ing, a real stunner, but... she’s got this older brother, see?”

Ingrid let out a sigh, only halfway listening to the rumble of his voice. But as he continued on, regailing his tale of heartache and woe, Ingrid took a bite of the scone and leaned her head against his shoulder.


	2. Carved Pine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The doors here were thinly cut, made of carved pine. They were ill-suited to keep in the soul-crushing grief that weighed upon her chest.

The doors here were thinly cut, made of carved pine. All decorative, and little function. They couldn’t have kept out the ice and gusts that Ingrid had grown up in, and they were ill-suited to keep in the soul-crushing grief that weighed upon her chest.

Ingrid ran her hands up her face, fingers grasping at her hair and pulling as she screamed into her palms. The world felt sharp and all at once too bright. She begged herself to wake up. Wake up from this disgusting nightmare.

She didn’t even hear it when Sylvain knocked. He must have known that, because it took him nothing at all to push open the carved pine, and by the time Ingrid screamed again, his arms were already around her, hugging her tightly against his chest.

“Ing...” he spoke, and his voice sounded watery. He was crying too and practically doubled over, just to keep her cradled properly in his arms. “Ingrid...”

Ingrid didn’t know what he wanted to say. She doubted he knew either. But he held her as she wailed until she could finally choke out her own words. “They’re monsters!”

“Ingr--”

“They killed their king! He’s... Dimitri...” she hiccuped and gasped. Her ribcage was cracking open, and she wanted nothing more than to smother it with heavy curtains, darkness, and the hollow ache of mourning. As she had done years before, for the boy who never came home.

“We didn’t see the body,” Sylvain whispered, his last shred of hope. “He might be...”

Ingrid couldn’t imagine Dimitri still alive, though. He had been unhinged since the siege at Garreg Mach. As all of them had fought to stay alive, to keep Faerghus intact, Dimitri had only slipped further and further away. Every injury he took, every death he saw, his whispered Edelgard’s name and seen another ghost.

Maybe he had lived through Cornelia’s execution, but would it even matter in the end? Would he ever be Dimitri again? Or had Felix been right all along?

Her tears were for the loss of a friend she had known her whole life. By bloodshed or madness, he was gone to her.

“Sylvain...” she whimpered, leaning back into his arms, her head tilted back against his chest as rivers ran down her cheeks now. “It hurts... it hurts so much--”

“I know,” he whispered back. “I hurt too, Ingrid... just... promise me you won’t shut us out this time.”

Ingrid blinked up at the ceiling, focusing her vision on the aging wood panels that made up the roof. They were hiding out together after the public execution. Mercedes, Annette, and Ashe had been separated at some point in the madness. Only she and Felix and Sylvain had gotten to a safe house. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Ingrid whispered. “Where do we go? Syl...”

“North,” he muttered, burying his head into her scalp. She felt him inhale deeply and let the breath out. His lungs stretching and shrinking against her back. “Rodrigue won’t stand for it... I’ll make my parents see the injustice... Come with us, Ing.”

“But Galatea...”

“Don’t... please don’t hole yourself away again.”

Her voice hitched in her throat.

“I can’t leave my family... I... I can’t bear to lose anyone else, Sylvain,” she admitted, her voice cracking.

And he knew that. He knew her fears, he had always known them. Since they had built stick forts in the Fraldarius gardens and she had insisted on being anything but ‘the damsel’ in their childhood games.

“Promise me, Ing,” he muttered into her hair. “Promise me you won’t let it consume you. You have to survive this... I can’t lose anyone else either.”

She gulped and sniffled but nodded her head slowly. “I promise... I’ll m-meet up with you and Felix again. We have to... make that reunion, right?”

Sylvain let out a tearful chuckle, his hands sliding down her arms and lace his fingers with hers.

“Try to come sooner, Ing... who’s going to keep me out of trouble if you’re not here to lecture me?”


	3. Creaking Hinges

Ingrid had watched Sylvain’s door close before. Five years ago, the monastery had been in a better state, with polished wood and proper hinges. Those same doors were worn and chipped now, with squeaking knobs that showed the damage and neglect since they had been gone.

Maybe that was why Ingrid had noticed his door closing to begin with. She could hear the tarnished hinges creaking. It had brought her eyes down the hall in the brief moment before Ingrid opened her own bedroom door to take off her armor and tuck herself into bed.

She wished that she hadn’t looked up.

In all the years she’d known Sylvain, he had been a notorious flirt for most of them. A charmer through and through, who had courted as many girls as he could for a day or two at most. It wasn’t surprising that he was doing so now, too. People needed something to help them get through a war, after all... something to make them feel human.

But when her eyes drifted up and she saw a young woman from the merchant caravan slipping into Sylvain’s room with him-- a smile on both their faces-- something felt cold and broken inside her chest.

Ingrid gulped, and stared down the hall, even as the door closed, creaking back into place behind them.

She twisted the knob of her own door and stepped inside. The air was quiet and the room lonely. Dusty and worn, no longer the place that a student lived. Now... just the room that a soldier slept in. A lonely place with a meager shield that did nothing to block out the knowledge that Sylvain was down the hall... with another woman.

For some reason, Ingrid wondered what they were doing. Was he whispering lovely things to her? Kissing her sweetly and finding a bit of confidence and peace between the bloodshed?

Ingrid imagined herself in that room. His smile against her neck and his hands sliding down her hips. 

“Stupid,” she muttered to herself, grumbling as she unbuckled her breastplate and set it aside. Her gauntlets came next, but before she took off her boots, she stopped.

Ingrid sat on the edge of her bed. 

It shouldn’t matter as much as it did. Sylvain had told her not a month ago that he relied on her. They trained together every morning, putting one another through their paces so they wouldn’t fall in battle. 

But she hadn’t seen him pursuing any women lately. It had been so long... maybe part of her had forgotten. How it felt to be left behind. How it stung to be overlooked.

She stood up again, flexing her fingers before clenching them into small fists at her sides.

Annette would still be awake at this hour.


	4. Powder & Polish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annette’s door was as old and creaky as any other in the monastery, but the young mage had a habit of cleaning when she was nervous. She kept her room as immaculate as she could, having dusted and polished the old wood and made it almost look like it had when they were students. Whenever Ingrid dropped in, it made her feel like she was walking back in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't originally planning to have a chapter for this, but then I was reminded of how good Ingrid's & Annette's supports are, so I had to add this one in.
> 
> Also, thanks for the patience as I write at inconsistent paces. Work's been really busy, so it doesn't leave me much time to write.

Annette’s door was as old and creaky as any other in the monastery, but the young mage had a habit of cleaning when she was nervous. She kept her room as immaculate as she could, having dusted and polished the old wood and made it almost look like it had when they were students. Whenever Ingrid dropped in, it made her feel like she was walking back in time.

Ironic, since the reason she had started visiting with Annette was because she didn’t want to be trapped by the past anymore.

“How’s this?” Ingrid asked with a sigh, looking from the small mirror to her friend. Annette gave her a devilish grin. 

“And you said you had no idea how to wear make up!” 

“I_ didn’t_,” Ingrid chuckled. It was harder to tell that she was flushing if she had powder and rouge already on her cheeks. Made her seem more confident and sure. A bit of kohl around her eyes brought out their shape and color, and while none of it made Ingrid unrecognizable, it all served to make her seem different.

Older, maybe. 

New.

Annette leaned over Ingrid’s shoulder, looking at her reflection in the mirror and nodding in small approvals for her progress. The lessons and practice Annette had offered over the past few weeks had made a difference.

“Someday, I’ll convince you to try colored shadow,” Annette commented. “But you’re beautiful, Ingrid. You always have been.”

“Oh stop,” Ingrid laughed, waving her friend off. “You and Mercedes just never quit with that.”

“Because you don’t know how to take a compliment!” Annette laughed with her. “Anytime we tell you how pretty you are, you say we’re exaggerating.”

Ingrid knew she was right. Ever since they’d been students, she had never known how to accept that kind of praise. She sought it for her skills or her intelligence, but if someone complimented her looks, it had always set off a small sting of panic in her. A self-conscious paranoia.

“...I know,” Ingrid sighed and leaned back in the chair. She tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “I need to get better about that.”

There was a quiet pause before Annette patted Ingrid’s shoulder and asked, “What’s changed?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t like to change how you look,” Annette reminded her. “You told me once... you didn’t want to change without him.”

Ingrid didn’t flinch at the vague mention of Glenn. She used to, when they were younger. When had his memory stopped feeling like an open wound?

“Are you ready to move on now?” Annette asked, her voice gentle.

Ingrid had to think about that for a moment. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, thinking about the girl she had been. The girl who had locked herself in her room for months. Who had kept doors closed like shields around herself for a long time, and always pretended like she was fine. The girl who hadn’t changed her hair since she was thirteen and had been afraid to wear make up because it made her look more like an adult, and she felt like her time was always borrowed from the dead.

“...Yeah,” Ingrid nodded. “I am. I think I have been for a while, but with everything happening, it’s...”

“I know,” Annette said. “It’s hard.”

“Yeah.”

Ingrid smiled a bit at the mirror. Her smirk apologetic and lopsided. She knew she was ready to let go of him now. She had been for a while. That was why it had hurt so much, to see Sylvain with other people. Because he had fallen into his old habits too, just like she had been stuck in for years.

Ingrid wanted them both to be better than their pasts. They deserved more.

“You think anyone will notice?” she asked with a chuckle. 

“Oh, absolutely,” Annette declared, clapping her hands together excitedly. “I can’t wait for everyone to see how you’ve transformed! You’re like a little butterfly coming out of its cocoon.”

Ingrid chuckled again and shook her head lightly. “I wouldn’t go that far, Annie, but... thank you. I’d never have had the courage to try this without your help.”


	5. Open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years ago, she had cracked open her bedroom door to let him inside. Now, she just needed to open it a little bit more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks for sticking with me through this short series. Part character-study, part ship-growth, it has been fun to write. I know that there is more I could add to this fic, and I might in the future, but for now I think it needs to come to a close. It just feels right to call it complete here.
> 
> But who knows! I might write a bonus chapter in the future, or some kind of companion piece. Anything is possible.

The doors to the war room were wide open. Aged oak that had been repaired with pieces of any other wood they could find. The monastery would see more substantial and permanent repairs soon. At least... Ingrid hoped it would be soon.

They marched on Enbarr in the morning. If they won, then this place would be restored to the sacred halls it once was. They’d all help put it back together, then go their separate ways to the lives they wanted to live after the war. Dimitri would become a proper king, she and Dedue would linger over his shoulder and make sure he stayed himself, and not the wild creature he had made himself into.

Annette insisted that she wanted to become a professor once the school was functioning again, while Mercedes seemed attached to the cathedral. Ashe wasn’t sure if he would take up the Gaspard estate or go into knighthood alongside Ingrid, but either one, he was suited for.

But none of those futures would exist if they lost. And that thought kept her awake late into the night, looking at maps by candlelight.

It wasn’t surprising when she heard footsteps. Ingrid was sure that many of them would have trouble sleeping tonight.

“What are you doing in here?” Sylvain asked. He looked grey-eyed and worried, the sleeves of his tunic rolled up and loose. Without his armor on, he looked so much lighter. Ingrid liked that look of him. She wanted to live through the last battles if for no other reason than to see him in his shirtsleeves more often.

“Thinking,” Ingrid answered, turning around and leaning back to prop herself against the edge of the large table. She gave him a half-hearted smile through her own tired expression. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

Sylvain shrugged. “Eh. Sleep’s over rated.”

Ingrid chuckled and tucked loose hair behind her ear. She’d taken out her braid for the night, leaving short, fluffy waves around her chin. They were impossible to keep in one place, always slipping into her eyes.

Sylvain’s hand reached out and help, his thumb grazing over her cheek as he went. Her laugh cut short and the air went still.

“You’re not wearing make up,” he observed.

“Washed it off for the night,” Ingrid said. 

They both hesitated, looking at each other. He was so much taller than her. when had he gotten that big? 

“You never answered my question,” he pointed out. “About why you’re wearing it.”

“Yeah, well, you ran off stuttering before I could,” she reminded him. Sylvain winced slightly at that, retracting his hand. It had lingered, but Ingrid had hardly noticed. It just felt like his touch belonged there.

“Sorry... about that. I don’t know what was going on in my head,” he sighed. “I think it’s the lack of sleep.”

“It’s ok,” she reassured him with a smile. “I know it’s tough. Do... the women help?”

Immediately, Ingrid wished that she hadn’t asked. She didn’t know why she did, because no matter the answer, she didn’t really want to know. Either he took solace in them and they helped him when she couldn’t. Or, they meant nothing and he was just... going through the motions.

But Sylvain glanced down and he sighed and something in him opened up.

“I thought they would,” he admitted. “But no. I tried messing around twice, but... I dunno. I’m not cut out for this anymore.”

Ingrid didn’t know how to feel about that, but... she was glad that he was being honest with her, if nothing else. “That’s ok,” Ingrid offered with a teasing expression. “Maybe you’re finally growing up.”

Sylvain rolled his eyes and smirked. “That’s rich, coming from you,” he joked back. “It only took you... how many years to put on some blush? Twenty-two?”

“Twenty-three,” Ingrid laughed. “Thank you very much.”

“Oh, excuse me, then,” he snickered. “I’m still just trying to figure it out, though.”

“Figure what out?”

“Whether you look more beautiful with blush or in candlelight.”

Again, they fell silent, their eyes locked together. Ingrid felt something flutter in her chest, but at the same time, something else tightened. Fear. 

“...Sylvain--”

“I know, I know,” he murmured. “You don’t like it when I flirt, but can’t I do it sometimes? If I really mean it?”

The flutter grew stronger. “_Do you_ mean it?”

“I always mean it.”

“Even when it’s me?”

She watched him gulp on air, the muscles in his throat tensing and releasing as he did. One hand reached back to scratch and fidget at the back of his neck. He was nervous again, just like he had been the other day in the cathedral. But this time, he wasn’t trying to run away.

“Yeah, Ingrid... even when it’s you,” he assured her. “_Especially_ when it’s you.”

Ingrid took a deep breath. The fluttering in her chest settled, and so did the sting of fear. Ten years ago, she had cracked open her bedroom door to let him inside. Now, she just needed to open it a little bit more.

“I didn’t start wearing make up for a guy,” she told him quietly. “I did it for me.”

Sylvain blinked, but stayed quiet. He didn’t want to interrupt, and Ingrid would tell that he wasn’t sure what her words meant.

“I did it because I’m ready to be someone new,” she told him. “Not just a sad little girl locked in her bedroom.”

The silence shifted from confusion to understanding. Sylvain’s hand dropped away from his neck. “Ingrid--”

“I did it for me,” she said again, more sure of her words this time. “And I’m doing _this _for me too.”

Before he could say anything, Ingrid stood on the very tips of her toes and grabbed his jaw between both her hands. He was too tall and she was too short, but she managed to pull his lips down to hers and clench her eyes shut as she kissed him. 

Every fluttering feeling in her chest began to beat senselessly against her rib cage, full of excitement and worry. She had no clue how to kiss, if she were being honest. Sylvain probably had standards and wouldn’t find himself so attracted to her anymore, but she still had to do it. At least to say that she had.

But after a moment of stubbornly holding onto it, one of his hands wrapped around her waist. The other covered hers which was clinging to his cheek. He pried her grip loose.

“W-Woah there,” he muttered, his lips still brushing against her own. His voice sounded like he had in the church. Stammering and flushed. “You’re squishing my cheeks,” he muttered.

Ingrid gulped and pulled back a bit then, a rush of embarrassment turning her cheeks a blotchy shade of pink. “I... S-Sorry--”

“No, it’s fine, uhm... just...” he paused before he quickly placed both hands on her hips and picked her up, boosting her to sit on top of the war table. One of the maps crinkled beneath her legs, but she was at a better height now. He smiled at her, looking just as blotchy as she did, in the dim light.

Ingrid smiled back, softening her grip on his face. 

“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” she admitted.

“I could tell.”

She pouted and he chuckled, stepping closer to stand between her knees, one hand rising up to again, tuck her unruly hair back into place and linger on her cheek.

“It’s ok,” he assured her. “It’s cute, actually. You can do just about anything, and usually better than I can, but this is one thing I get to give you pointers on.”

Ingrid couldn’t help but smile too. “So we’re not going to pretend that this never happened?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Galatea, you’re going to have to live with that first kiss for the rest of our lives.”

“That... might not be a very long time,” she mentioned, remembering why she couldn’t sleep in the first place. Why neither of them could.

Sylvain leaned down and kissed her temple.

“Don’t... It’s going to be ok,” he told her, even if it was a lie. “Just stay near me in the field, Ing. Stay where I can see you... and it will all be ok.”

“And you’ll teach me how to kiss properly afterwards?”

“I’ll teach you how to kiss properly _now_,” he smirked. “Just in case.”


End file.
